Posts made by Diego_BioSteam

Gonna present a poster in a scientific conference about Visual Storytelling for science - part of my job!

Started reading a bit more on the definitions of visual storytelling, even though it seems like any of us can grasp it's concept without having to refer to wikipedia. @Lee-White even provided a definition in one of his Visual Storytelling classes and I almost wanted to quote him.

Anyway... I found this interesting article that brings the definition to a Marketing approach. I liked that the author brought up the main issue with nowadays communication. Quoted below:

"To paint the picture in broader strokes, we see that the communications landscape today is strongly marked by 2 opposing forces:

Content explosion: a dramatic and continual increase in content production,

“4.6 billion pieces of content are produced every day” – LinkedIn

and content consumption is further enabled by greater broadband and mobile access

So... you can imagine the problems that lie ahead. High demand of content. You kill yourself producing something that people will spend 8 seconds (or less) on it. Wondering if the whole field of visual storytelling will be adapting to creating pieces that do the job of grabbing your attention in only 8 seconds. But that is not the main point I want to discuss now.

We are living in a saturated era. Probably everyone in the past (100 or 1000 or 10k years ago) said the same. But I just thought that this could be some food for thought after reading some posts on the difficulties of establishing a career in this artistic field. @smceccarelli@Eric-Castleman

Too many people getting university degrees and PhD degrees. Too many people without stable jobs trying alternatives. Too many alternative resources for you to learn and to start your own business available. Too many people selling alternative resources because this is their alternative career. Too many competent and incompetent people trying to make a living.

When this happens, the selection system also acts more intensively.

Interestingly, if there were less people, the problem would be the same. Less people trying to produce art would also mean that there were less clients, less alternative resources (if any), less opportunities and so on.

The system is always well balanced - it doesn't mean that well balanced equals being a sea of roses. It is not the fairytale fantasy kind of harmony. If there are too many deers in the savannah, there will be more food for the lions. They eat well, reproduce well and increase their population. Big lion population eat too many deers, less food for too many lions, they die. The system balances itself by removing a portion of itself, such that the other portion also gets removed. Actually, a lot of people studying economics learn their strategies from these events in the wild!

The fear of not breaking into the field may lead you to remove yourself from it. That is the system balancing itself. Of course there are other factors that may lead to you "giving up" on it. But at the end of the day, giving up is the thing that doesn't break through the doors of any field. It is not a bad thing if you accept it and happily embark on a new journey in another field - for some reason, we penalize "giving up" when we should say "I wish you well on your new journey, but just make sure you embark on a new journey!".

Almost finishing the "tree house" piece and after painting all the creatures that are inhabiting the tree, I thought I should make some sketches and studies on them. They way they behave, their interactions with other species, details of their anatomy... these are all interesting things that may be worth exploring. I wrote some notes about them mixed with notes on character design from the class "Breathing life into your character designs".

Just curious... what country are you from? It seems that some countries in Europe and in Asia will also be more open to other alternatives, even in their own companies and schools. So, one of the other reasons that I didn't mention above is also related to cultural attitudes of certain societies.

Ghibli studio, besides making a lot of its animations by hand, used a software that was called Toonz to animate some of its feature movies, and it is now open-source development, Opentoonz: https://opentoonz.github.io/e/

There is no unique answer to this issue "which is better, Free/Open-Source software or Commercial software? GIMP or Photoshop?"

It depends on several factors and varies for each individual user, their personal experiences and their learning and professional usage.

Here is what I think about it, based on personal experience and discussions with several friends and colleagues that are working professionally with digital art.

Commercial software that is produced by successful companies (i.e. Adobe products) is stable, user friendly and (unless the company goes bankrupt) will continue it's development, so it is good for you.

What to think about it:

because of this, most big companies working with digital art (an animation studio, game studio or a graphic design studio) will use these software in their workflow, so you need to learn to use these software if you want to work for some specific company. It may be worth checking what experience they require to see if your software skills fit in.

because of the above, most digital art courses/schools will teach with these software. One of the objectives of the school is that you get a job in the industry and if they use a different software, you may not get that job and this will reflect bad on the school. And that is the main reason any school will advocate the use of a certain software. Also, the fact that most industry professionals are working with these software, when they go to teach in a school, they will teach what they know how to use.

because they are over-used, the community is large and you can find several resources in books, blogs, forums youtube and online courses, a lot of them are free.

Also, they have money to spend on marketing! So they are better at convincing you that their product is wonderful and better than any indie/free/open-source development with low budget.

There are free/open-source software that is as good as commercial ones. GIMP and Krita are good enough if you are good at doing art. They may lack some functions that photoshop has, but most of these are sort of shortcuts that exist because people paid for the software so they want easy ways to do things in the long term.

What to think about it:

They are free and good enough! Nevertheless, for being free, whoever is developing these software need some sort of income to continue living. In some cases the software development dies. It may be worth checking for how long GIMP and Krita are active and what is going on in their development for you to decide if it is worth it.

If you go freelancing or open your own small studio, clients don't care about what software you use. They want the final image or video file. So, you save money on paying for software.

Also (for freelancing and similar), I've heard that some clients demand that you make your art in licensed software in case you use a commercial one - no pirated copies here because they also want to avoid legal issues with piracy. Using free software will save you and your client of these problems.

The communities and learning resources may not be as diverse as the ones for commercial but they exist and are equally good.

Photoshop or GIMP or Krita are just tools. You may learn how to use the tool, but you need to also focus on learning art too. Light, colour, composition, storytelling, character and environment design and so on. You can do all of these with any tool, even colour pencils or pastels (I've seen concept artists doing acrylic paintings that are better than any photoshop based art).

What to think of this:

don't learn how to draw a Super-Hero in photoshop. Learn how to draw a Super-Hero and that is it. Then you use photoshop or gimp or even Maya or 3DSMax to draw it.

Always have a cheap (very cheap) sketchbook and use it to learn your art! Don't buy expensive fancy ones. You will feel like they are too expensive and nice to try things that you will be afraid that won't look good. You may not even use it, and if you do fancy pieces on it, that won't be a sketchbook anymore.

After reading some Japanese children books written before the 90's, I am having the feeling that their stories were written for anyone - it just happens that everyone will have a different experience with a story, based on their own experiences. I feel that the same goes for a book like "The Little Prince".

This comes from the introduction of an anthology of Japanese children literature: "The profound rupture in adult literary forms during the Meiji era (1868-1912) was echoed in the rewriting of folktales as literature for children. The process was anticipated in early Meiji in the misrepresentation by European scholars and residents of Japan of classical fables and tale literature as having been written for children. However, among scholars in Japan, the emergence of children's literature is identified not with Western representations of Japanese traditions, but with the subsequenct practice of revising folktales and fables to address the modern children of the Meiji era." [Joan E. Ericson, 2001. A Rainbow in the Desert: an anthology of early twentieth century Japanese children's literature]

Nice insight about Tolkien thoughts and I would like to share it here.
I believe there are several reasons why certain economies create categories for things such as children books, teenager books and so on. ... But I like food for thought!

It all depends on what you want (and no worries, we don't need to want only one thing in life).
As @Lee-White mentioned, some industries require specific knowledge and skills in a certain task/tool/software, and you need to learn them if you want to work for that company.

Question yourself: as someone that wants to tell visual stories, are you moving forward in life in order to work for that specific company or is it for being able to tell these visual stories? I agree with what Iain Mccaig says: "I am here to serve the story, not the story to serve me". Sometimes these will be someone's else story, sometimes your own stories. Whatever it is, make yourself able to serve that story, and serve it well!

This is just a tangent point that came after a small discussion about the use of alternative software for doing digital art, such as using GIMP or Krita instead of Photoshop @Lee-White@Miriam

I am sharing an article about the concept artist Adam Adamowicz, which worked for the game company that created Fallout and Skryim. He was an amazing and creative artist and it may be worth checking his artwork!

I've read this article before and there are so many things that it inspires, but I really love this passage:

"In this temple to computer art, I couldn't believe that Adam worked in traditional media. He used pencils, pens, markers, coloured pencils and paint. What impressed me more than anything was the abundance of creativity... Flipping through his work, I was always struck by the bubbling confluence of subjects, a fearless fusion of influences. He developed his artwork using a range of tools: pens, markers, coloured pastels. His creations were a collection of distinct and disparate ideas. When designing an original gun, for instance, Adam didn't focus his research on the study of other guns, but on tesla coils, industrial power tools, or lab equipment. When designing outfits, Adam employed chew toys and oven mitts, radios and asbestos padding. The results were messy, ridiculous, and utterly original."

A clear example that the artist is primarily in your brain, and secondarily in your hands or in the tool you use.

I know this is not always the case, not all companies will be open to the idea of the artist using pastels and even within the company not every artist will be able to do that. Do not expect to use traditional media to create a 3D digital character (hum... you never know... maybe someone will make a stop motion animation of a clay character and input it in a game :P)

Nevertheless, I do think it is an eye-opener and shows how much one should not be restrained by a single way of doing things and, whenever it is possible, explore as much as you can!

I think that for children book illustration there are even more opportunities for such things - one of the several reasons I am loving the idea of working with it!

Of course there is more to learn from Adam's legacy, so, enjoy the article and feel free to share your thoughts!

Totally agree with you! It is also important that you teach what most industries will require! And it's nice that you put effort into making sure the students become ready to get a job! The industry also doesn't want their pipeline to be interrupted halfway because the different people working on it need to convert files and so on.

But I also think it is important to know that there are alternatives, especially if someone is willing to freelance and only need to deliver an image file. Also, not going with the conventional that is being given to you requires you to learn a lot of things in a different way (you need to dig information and know what questions to ask), which (for some people, not for all) is a good way to improve your learning skills - I believe there is a big issue with most people not knowing how to learn and with the excessive attitude of "what button do I press in Photoshop to do that?" or "What brush do you use?"... Too much shortcuts/spoon feeding is not good in the long term development of your career, we need to explore a bit by ourselves.

I never heard of a class on "Watercolour with Daler-Rowney Paints", so I dont' think you need to have a class on "Digital Painting with GIMP" - I know, its a different issue here (industry requirements), but I hope you get the point!

Maybe someone should start talking about alternative software such that people interested could easily know about them. That goes for the teaching too @Lee-White@will-terry-art@Jake-Parker - I know that most artists may not be using such software and may think that they cannot teach a digital painting class without Adobe products. Most of the principles of how they function are the same, even the interface is a bit similar. It should also be the student responsibility to learn about the software with resources available online.

And if you ask why to use free alternatives, here are good reasons:

There are really good free alternative software that is being constantly developed. So you get stable versions and any future upgrades!

It's free, so if you are a beginner artist, starting a studio or similar, you will have no expenses with software. If you are a professional artist, then it's up to you. If you are a well established artist, maybe you will be giving up on digital art and going back traditional.

I have heard from some professional friends that some clients required the license of the software they use (to avoid piracy issues). That may prevent you from using pirated/cracked versions of commercial software. Using free software saves you and your client from the problem.

They are usually compatible with more OS: Windows, Mac and Linux. Linux may be a good option if you want to go fully free and save more money. Including free alternative version of other design and publishing software too.

Main issues people complain about free software:

May not be user friendly: true in several cases. They are free, that means the company/developer making it is not making that much money, they can't afford paying people to turn everything nice and shinning - the focus is on functionality first. And to be honest, this only happens because you were used with a different software. If you had started your life with a free software such as GIMP, maybe you would find Photoshop not user friendly.

May lack some functions that commercial software has: same as above. Also... several functions added in commercial software are just to make people pay for more. Others are just shortcuts that can be done in any way (just need extra seconds/minutes to do the same thing).

Moving forward to a final piece for the "tree house". Still in progress but I am questioning the colour choice. Even though I am liking it, it lost the "dark fantasy" feel. Post processing may help a bit, so I am comparing both (original as post-processed). Any critique is welcome.

@miriam
I was suspecting you would not like this one as much as the original sketch. I agree that it is very difficult to understand what is going on with the new version. I hope that it is because it's just a sketch. But I don't mind trying a more complete painting for both versions and then deciding which one is more interesting for this story.

I think the challenge I am facing is on coming with these very odd structures and creatures that may be a bit distant from the usual - it is difficult for people to relate with them and like them. In most fantasy stories, a tree is a tree and that is it. Even if it is a walking tree (like a Treant), it still has all the features of a tree.

Cool! Here are two illustrations that I would like some critique if possible. They are not digital, tho.

The first one was done with the draw 50 things challenge in mind, but I didn't achieve the 50 things. The second one (done after I learned "how to ink" with Jake Parker) is for a story that I am trying to write and illustrate as part of my process of learning and improving. Both are done with watercolour, a bit of acrylic and ink in A3 paper - the second one has gouache on the characters and a bit of white poster colour for the steam vapour.

@miriam
I am glad you are liking this one! I am still thinking how to arrange or fit the idea of the honey pots. Maybe they will just become weird shapes that complement the ground of his "lair". I will also modify the structure of the tree. Lets see what happens!

Hope the final piece derived from this sketch will please you as well!